


what's done in the dark will be brought to the light

by vosiferous (orphan_account)



Category: Hatfilms, The Yogscast
Genre: Abuse (Emotional and Physical), Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Fae manipulation, M/M, Multi, Other, Other: See Story Notes, Urban Magic Yogs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:16:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3813607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/vosiferous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a rattlesnake of a man, one with a soft smile, a gaze that slices through souls, and a tongue that rattles lies like saliva. His blood is poison and his laugh are razorblades. He is a collector of fine artifacts, and he sees value in all things.</p><p>If you are not careful, he will see the value in you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you may throw your rock and hide your hand

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is pretty heavily centered on the abuse that stems from the emotions of an abuse survivor. ive been nervous about posting this for weeks and weeks because i'm aware of the fandom's feelings toward "fae manipulation", but i think that the emotion i put into this fic deserves to be recognized for what it is rather than stewing around on google docs and making me feel weird every time i realize i'm the only one that knows it exists.
> 
> edit: for anyone curious, the song the title / chapter title comes from is "god's gonna cut you down" by johnny cash

There are always legends passed from selkie grandparents to selkie parents to selkie children. There is the average lore designed to scare children: the great shark, twice the size of any boat; the murderous mermaids equipped with their sea shanties designed to drown; the dancing crab designed to trick small selkies into tight spaces between rocks and then collapse the rubble on them when they are trapped. Trott thinks of himself as too old for those stories, realizing the purpose of these folktales long ago and classifying them as childish.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his favorites. He loves the story of the stolen skin. The young selkie woman drawn from the water by a man who fell in love with her and stole her skin that kills her sisters when they try to retrieve her because she loves him so. It fascinates him, and often he cannot elude it in dreams. He imagines himself as the selkie woman huddling tightly against a human with long, slow breaths passing between them. He envies.

When he loses his skin from the driftwood he hides it under, he does not cause any alarm, does not raise suspicion. His family are retreating to the water and waving for him to join them. He paints his face into a smile and calls in the language of the deep that he will be right in, that he’s forgotten a shell he wants to keep. The girls giggle at him and slip beneath the waves. Trott watches them go before frantically digging through the sand to find his skin. Without it, he knows, he can’t return to his home beneath the waves.

A figure approaches from along the misty shore, a tall man with a nervous smile that shines like white gold. Trott stares at him, at the neatly folded skin he is holding, but when he reaches for it, the man steps back nervously. Trott is alarmed.

“Selkie?” the man asks. Trott, miraculously, can understand him, though he’s sure this man who reeks of humanity is not fluent in the ancient fae languages. “I’ve read about you. This is your skin, isn’t it?” Trott nods slowly, eyes locked on the skin. “If I keep this, you will have to stay with me.” Trott nods again. “You are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen,” the man says, then holds out his hand. Trott hesitates, heart pounding, and then takes the man’s hand, which is warm and calloused, a contrast to his own smooth, sleek skin.

 

* * *

 

The man Trott stays with is an avid and enthusiastic lover of the sea. He and Trott delight themselves in singing songs to one another; Trott teaches him selkie songs in old fae and the man teaches him human drinking songs. He teaches Trott English, how to read it and to write it. Trott teaches himself how to cook and how to take care of himself when his seafaring romancer is away.

He never asks once about his skin. He doesn’t see the need to--he and his human are happy the way they are. Trott has no restrictions the woman in the story had, no setbacks in his life; he can walk along the ocean’s shore and can buy groceries himself and can even crochet. He’s as human as he could possibly be as a magical being. He relishes it for a while.

His human likes to parade with Trott on his arm, clearly pleased with the attractive selkie. Trott blushes and waves his hands when their friends tell his human that Trott is “the best catch he’s ever had”. He fits in.

Trott fits in until he can no longer. His human comes home one night absolutely reeking of alcohol, and of magic. Trott finds this perplexing--humans are incapable of using magic without being in contact with fae willing to teach, and his human is too drawn to the ocean to sit still for a lesson. Trott ushers him inside and presses a kiss to his forehead in worry, and after an hour of drunken babbling, he gets the words out of his human.

Unfortunately, they are the words he does not want to hear. His human, his poor, stupid, drunk fisherman, has traded his skin away to someone he can barely remember. Trott is numb for a few seconds, taken aback by the words. He blinks. Then, he does the proper thing and pads to the kitchen to fix them both tea, breath heaving.

Trott’s shaking hands fumble with many things, but at some point his trembling becomes uncontrollable and a teacup slips from his grasp and smashes on the floor. Trott carefully avoids the glass as he meanders across the floor of the kitchen, setting the kettle on the stove’s burner. He looks at the shards of the cup on the floor warily.

His human doesn’t mean it. He reeks of magic. He was manipulated because he was drunk. Trott shudders to think about what kind of powerful mage concerns himself with selkies. It wasn’t the human’s fault. The glazed porcelain gleams at him the floor. Trott steps closer to it, picking up a large, jagged shard. No, he tells himself. No. His human doesn’t mean it. It was an accident.

Trott exits the kitchen, fingers trembling. His human is snoring against the table in the dining room. His face is flushed, his shoulders slumped from his drink and, no doubt, from the magic that weighs him down. Adrenaline pumps a steady heartbeat in Trott’s ears, deafeningly loud. Trott steps up behind him and steadies himself against the back of the human’s chair. He lifts him by his hair, relieved that the human doesn’t stir. He grips the porcelain so hard it splits the skin of his hand, and he doesn’t stop gripping it that tight until he finishes dragging the shard across the human’s neck.

The human, Trott’s beloved human, makes a little strangled noise. More than that, he makes multiple strangled noises before they slowly die out. The blood sits on Trott’s hands and he stares at them, dropping the shard of the teacup onto the floor, where it clatters for a moment before settling.

The kettle shrieks from the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

 

When Kirin retrieves Trott the morning after Trott kills his human, he enters the dining room with a warm, wet cloth. He kneels in front of Trott and cleans the blood off of the selkie’s hands. “Hello,” he says. “Your skin is safe, but it’s back at my home. You don’t belong here anymore, Trottimus. My name is Kirin. I will be your new master.”

Trott looks up at him wearily. “He’s dead,” he says. “The human.”

“I know. Did you kill him?”

Trott nods, the warm cloth that Kirin is wiping his hands with causing him to slump in his seat. “I was so upset. I didn’t mean it.” 

Kirin finishes his job with Trott’s hands and pulls him up to stand, lifting him into his arms. The selkie relaxes in his arms and rests his head on the man’s shoulder. Kirin exits the home slowly, depositing Trott into his car before climbing in himself.

 

* * *

 

“You’re sure you want to keep this one?” a voice asks. Trott, still groggy from sleep, keeps his eyes closed for a few moments. He isn’t even sure where he is. What happened? He remembers warmth and a man. “One hundred percent?” 

A familiar voice laughs and Trott hears the tinkling of glass things against each other. “Yes, I’m sure,” the familiar one asks. Trott peeks an eye open, and a face he doesn’t recognize raises its eyebrow. 

“Oh, holy hell, Dave, it’s awake. You weren’t lying!” Eyes ringed with perfectly-applied eyeliner scan his face before turning, a long wave of lovely golden hair ghosting Trott’s face as this person does so. 

"No, I wasn't," the man says, back to the both of them. What was his name? Trott rattles his brain and decides that Kirin rings a bell. "I don't know why you're surprised, anyway. You're the one with the name to match the reputation." He turns to them, and Trott notices he's holding two mugs in his hands. He carefully walks toward them and brandishes them to both Trott and the blonde at his bedside. 

"Oh, ha-ha. You're the funniest person I know. They should give you an award." 

Kirin grins mischievously at Trott, eyes twinkling with the kind of happiness that just made Trott want to smile back. "Hello again," he exclaims, voice warm as Trott takes a sip of his mug. The liquid inside tastes like grapes, but after he swallows, it begins to taste like blueberries. Strawberries? Was that cherry? Trott licks his lips curiously and takes another sip. 

"You've been asleep for almost two days! Lying was beginning to give up on you altogether." He gestures to the slender blonde figure, who is holding their hair away from their face as they begin to spit the liquid from their mug into one of the many, many potted plants covering the room's floor. "I, however, knew that you would pull through this. You're a fighter, I can tell." 

"Are you trying to kill me?!" Lying hacks, and a clack against the floor suggests that Lying is kicking in panic with a shoe that includes heels. 

"Absolutely. But you know nothing I put in there could kill you, anyway. I just added a little wolfsbane to scare you." He wiggles his fingers at Trott, who smiles around a mouthful, though uneasily. He doesn't think he tastes wolfsbane, but he doesn't know what wolfsbane even tastes like. 

"If that's the thanks I get for all my help, next time your little boyfriend goes into shock, I'll leave him!" Lying tosses the mug to the floor and leaves indignantly. Kirin watches them go with a smile. After the clacking of Lying's heels disappear from earshot, he sighs contently and puts his hands on his hips.

"Are you fit to walk? It's been a few days. I'd like to show you around your new home." 

Trott gently places his mug onto the floor beside the low bed and tests his legs. They move well enough, though they've always moved a bit awkwardly, and in response he throws the blankets off of his body and sits up. He notices he's been changed, bloody jeans and sweater traded out in exchange for loose-fitting sweats and a thin t-shirt. He wonders if Kirin changed him by himself or if Lying helped. "Excellent," Kirin cries, clapping his hands together and holding out an arm for Trott to join him. When he does, Kirin is off, hands moving animatedly as he chatters away.

 

* * *

 

The first time he tries to take his skin, he learns why only Lying resists Kirin. In fairness, it hadn't been Trott's fault. He hadn't meant to steal it, just take it, just hold it. He couldn't imagine leaving this house even with it. It's his home. He loves the attention he's paid and the amount of time he gets to spend neck-deep in bathtubs.

He has stumbled across the room previously and by accident. Kirin's study. It was off-limits to everyone but himself and Lying, and even the well witch very seldom joined him. It wasn't dangerous or anything, just his personal space. Trott respects that and respects his need for space. He's examined every other room, though, and he's almost positive this is the room his skin is located. It can't be anywhere else. He even checked the floorboards.

Apprehensively he turns the knob, fingers hesitating before he pushes the ornate wooden door open and steps inside. Kirin's office is magnificent. There are all kinds of things on the wall, objects Trott both recognizes and doesn't even know where to begin to fathom. 

An orb floats above his head, nearly touching the high ceiling, as black and as light-absorbing as it could be. A dark wood desk sits toward the back wall. Kirin's personal workspace. A set of Newton's Cradle balls sits on them, clacking away without any source of the momentum needed to push them. Kirin's computer sits beside the set, an open laptop pressed close next to that. Both appear to be in sleep mode, to Trott's relief. He doesn't need to get into more trouble.

He notices an ornate chest pushed behind the desk, Kirin's office chair resting one of its wheels against it as though Kirin jumped up abruptly and sent it spinning. He probably has--he's a very busy man and he does a lot of sudden changing in his plans. Professionals like that have to be able to. Trott envies him a little.

Trott is immediately drawn to the chest, and he knows it has to have his skin inside. He tries it once without a thought, not at all surprised to find it locked. Many skinsnatchers lock their selkies' skins away or hide them where they cannot be found without raising suspicion. He doesn’t blame Kirin for locking it away, to say the least, but he doesn’t up on trying to unlock it. Despite his contentment with the current situation he’s in and the role he plays in Kirin’s life, he’d much rather experience it as a free selkie.

Stealing a glance to the door, he begins to rummage through the drawers in Kirin’s desk. He doesn’t find any keys, but he does find a half-chewed pen cap and a stack of sticky notes that all have the words ‘fuck you’ written on them by what looks like red fountain pen. Trott snorts-- _Lying_ \--and tosses them both back into the drawer.

He checks every drawer, under the desk, and even beneath the seat of the chair, but he finds nothing. No key anywhere. He snaps his fingers. Damn. Kirin must have them on his keyring or hidden somewhere Trott doesn’t know about. Maybe they’re up in the pearly orb that seems to be throbbing and letting out a whole hell of a lot of light and--wait what? When Trott entered Kirin’s office, it had been practically absorbing the light, and now he could hardly look at it.

Before Trott really has a chance to contemplate on what exactly that means, the door opens. Trott holds his breath and turns to face what he knows is waiting for him. Kirin stands across from him, breathing hard and scowling. Shit. Trott’s in trouble.

“Trott,” Kirin says. “What are you doing in here? Who let you in here?” His voice is firm, and he’s obviously very upset. “What is our one rule about the house?”

“Don’t go into this room,” Trott mumbles. He’s still seated at the desk. Fuck, how much guiltier could he look?

“What was that? Speak up, Trottimus.” Trott flinches at the use of his full name. Kirin hasn’t used his full name since he showed him around.

Trott looks up at him, clearing his throat. “Don’t go into this room,” he repeats, voice shaking. Kirin smiles at the selkie at his desk, but it is cold and frightening. Trott has never seen this smile before, and he’s not sure he wants to.

“So you’re telling me,” Kirin begins, boots thumping on the floor as he saunters over to the desk. “That you _knew_ about this rule? And you willingly disobeyed it?”

Trott cringes. He’s afraid to answer, honestly, because there’s not really a way for him to win this argument. If he says yes, he’s going to look like a troublemaker, which he is most certainly is not trying to be. If he says no, he’s going to look like a troublemaker and a smartass. He keeps his mouth shut and looks away.

Kirin slams his hands down on the wood desk, and Trott jumps in surprise. He stares up at Kirin, eyes wide, and finds Kirin’s blue orbs staring wildly back at him. “That’s answer enough for me, Trott. If you can’t come up with a lie for me, that means you’re guilty. Are you guilty?”

“Yes. I disobeyed you. I’m sorry.”

“Trott, please come around the desk and stand in front of me.”

Fuck. Trott stands slowly, searching Kirin’s face for indication of his intentions. He doesn’t find anything, but Kirin’s eyebrows arch upward sympathetically and his hands gently beckon Trott closer. He begins to relax and circles around the desk, approaching Kirin apprehensively.

Kirin slaps him hard across the face, and the force of it sends Trott to the floor with a loud cry. His hand clutches the warm skin and he looks at the floor. Kirin kneels beside him and pulls him in for a hug, one that Trott can’t help but want to resist. He lets himself fall limp.

“I’m sorry, Trott. I know it hurts, but you disobeyed the clearly stated rules, and you have to be punished for it.” He rubs Trott’s back with sympathetic circles and kisses the top of the selkie’s head. “It hurts me as much as it hurts you. I hate to cause you pain.”

Trott nods and presses his cheek to Kirin’s neck. He knows. He understands why Kirin had to do it.

He also understands that he will never let Kirin have that kind of power over him again.


	2. workin' in the dark against your fellow man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunger, hunger so deep it rattles every time you breathe. Brothers in servitude will become lovers in freedom. Nobody touches a beast with a grudge. Rum raisin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually wrote these two chapters ahead of time! i distinctly remember this taking sooo much out of me that the night i finished it, i actually got so happy i cried! the effort plus starting it over like four times was enough to move me to tears!

“Get up.” Smith groans and rolls over, stuffing his pillow over his face. “Alex, get _up_!” A book goes flying across the room from a hand to Smith’s ass. He groans again, this time out of pain.

He sits up and sighs, hair bouncing as it settles into position. He yawns, scrubbing at his face before he looks over at his assailant, who is now settling into a chair with a commercial coffee cup in one hand and the morning paper folded up in the other. “Don’t call me Alex, please. You know how I hate it. It’s not even my name.” He scratches at his neck, sliding his finger in a circle under the bridle, creating a little air between the leather and his sweaty post-sleep skin.

Lying laughs and takes a sip of the coffee in their hand. “Uh-huh. It’s _affectionate_. You should be grateful I care about you that much.” They cross their legs and throw the newspaper at Smith, too. It smacks against his face before falling onto his lap with a crinkling thud. “Read it, you showpony.”

Smith begins to protest before he catches a glimpse of the headline, which reads:

**“KELPIE KILLER? FOURTH CASE OF INCOMPLETE HUMAN REMAINS IN SWAMP”**

He laughs and gives the article a kiss. “Dude, Lying, pass me some scissors! I want to keep this little beauty in with all my fine Italian pornos. Maybe I’ll tape it to the fridge, actually. Kelpie’s first spot in the limelight!”

“Can’t you take anything seriously? The article has an interview with the friend of the _human remains_ you left in the muck.” Lying looks at Smith with contempt, taking the newspaper back and skimming the column. “She says that she saw the victim last, aspiring lawyer and part-time telemarketer _Beth Taylor_ ,” Lying enunciates dramatically, rolling their eyes. “Getting into a green sports car with black racing stripes and a handsome, still unidentified young man--oh my god. You are the worst. They even call you a kelpie.”

Smith raises his eyebrows and hums. “Okay? Plenty of humans know about kelpies in the city. They know to keep away. Sue me.”

Lying grins sarcastically, flashing rows of unglamored sharp teeth. “This is three towns over. A human-dominated town. Do you get off on every fae living among humans checking constantly to make sure their disguises aren’t malfunctioning?”

“What, you want a handwritten apology? Want me to beg on my knees, kiss your heels?” Lying bats their eyelashes with a wolfish grin and Smith hisses. “Not an offer! I’m just saying that I don’t care what happens three towns over! Nobody here’s really stupid enough to get into my car, and so what if I have to go four towns over now? I have a fucking sports car that doesn’t run on fuel. I can drive four _countries_ over if I want.”

 

* * *

 

He’s getting desperate. Truly, honestly, tear-his-own-hair-out desperate. He’s gone towns over, cities over, and he’s impossibly hungry. Everyone knows about the ‘Kelpie Killer’, and they all avoid green cars like it’s the plague. Smith goes to human clubs and dances for hours, smearing his mouth across someone else’s, begs for them to come home with him, he’s driving, but as soon as they catch a glimpse of his car, they change their minds. It should be comforting that it’s not just him, that one morning when he’s bumming a cigarette outside a pub in his sunglasses, he sees a poor innocent human leading someone to his car, only to have her scream that he’s murdering her, but it isn’t.

It would any other time, but he’s starving. Lying won’t help him either, they’re nowhere to be found in the expanses of the city his cabin in the forest skirts. No phone calls, no texts, no teasing email forwards, not even in their favorite nightclub does Smith find even the faintest glimpse of long blonde hair. Oh well, Smith decides one night, muddling his dwindling time over while he shoves human food down his throat, human food that does nothing to satisfy the magic swirling in his chest.

 

* * *

 

Maybe that’s what attracts the Kirin to him, or maybe Lying tipped him off after the dozens of choked voicemails Smith sends them. Whatever the cause, Smith’s glad the solution is him. He brings a human to his doorstep, and when Smith can no longer rise from his bed, heavy chest rising and falling, the Kirin brings the human to him. Bound, gagged, and horrified, the poor human hardly gives resistance when his blindfold is removed and Smith’s lips take the place of the gag. The kelpie eats like a king and, with shaking fingers, he rises to the Kirin to shake his hand. He receives an offer instead.

“You appear to be having some relationship issues,” Kirin says, voice like melted butter, soft and warm and familiar. “I can fix them. I can keep you well-fed, well-kept, well-groomed.”

Smith’s eyebrows raise in curiosity, but he’s skeptical despite his gut instinct telling him that this is an offer he can’t refuse. “What’s the catch? I’m no show horse.”

“Very observant!” The sidhe lord Smith has heard so much about throws his head back and laughs, and it’s so artificially soothing that Smith grits his teeth hard enough to make them ache. “Yes, the catch. You’re good at what you do, I must admit. It isn’t your fault some humans are cunning.” Smith begins to argue, but Kirin holds up a finger, silencing him. “Not as cunning as you, of course, but you’re new to projecting and blending with humans, no?”

Smith nods slowly, and Kirin continues with a smile like daggers, shiny white and glinting in the light. “I can help with that, too. The point is that I need you to do my...heavy lifting. I know it’s degrading, you’re not a work horse, but I’m in dire need of someone capable of hoisting large amounts of magic, both physical and figurative, and I _know_ you’re just the kelpie I need.”

“And besides,” the monster croons, hooking a delicately-placed finger into his bridle, gently nudging him to rise and face him. “What’s a horse without a jockey?”

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t give his bridle willingly, and he rather likes the position of it around his neck, so it stays there, but he does give it away. Kirin is, for all intents and purposes, his master, and with that comes control over his magic. Kirin can turn his charm off in an instant, can keep him going for weeks without a screw or a kill in his grab bag, and he does.

It didn’t happen that way at first, no, of course not. Kirin brought him to bars he ran from the sidelines, to clubs so tightly packed with people and with so rich a history of fae and human mingling that nobody protests Smith dragging them into a bathroom stall to ingest whatever party drug they’re passing out and to grind into each other wildly, maniacally. Kirin made him breakfast when he was hungover, sent him shopping, kept him busy.

The kindness is enough to make him forget what his old routine was like. Lying, his cabin, his beautiful green sports car, they may as well have been distant memories, dreams from years ago. It’s enough to make him dependent, enough to make him Kirin’s _property_ , make him forget how to work without him. And then he spikes up the brutality.

It’s then that Smith learns why the sidhe lord is a topic of conversation between all fae at least once. He takes Smith’s collar when he goes out to intimidate or to collect money. Smith comes back with suitcases full of cash, with spells cast on him that Kirin can take out of him with a flick of his wrist, and he comes back gasping for breath, soul leaving him with every step. Kirin tosses him his bridle and Smith is grateful, and a week or so passes while the kelpie recovers.

A coincidental alignment of his resting period and Kirin’s business trip take a load off his shoulders, and he really gets a chance to explore the house he spends every sleeping moment in. (And that’s really all he ever does here, he thinks. Sleeping is his favorite activity.) People bustle in and out, people Smith recognizes in passing and doesn’t, and it’s one in particular that catches his attention.

Recognition between waterfae is universally accepted as fact, and Smith passes a room that smells so intensely of seawater that he has to brace himself against the wall to regain his senses, and before he’s fully in control of his motor functions, he does something stupid. He knocks on the door.

“Come in,” a voice calls, muffled but echoing with the ocean all the same. “It’s not locked.” Smith does. The room is modest, and like all rooms in Kirin’s abode, the windowsills are lined with strange plants and twisting vines. In a bed, looking frail and bruised and so, so beautiful, is a selkie. He’s seen them before on his tentative ventures past brackish waters into uncharted stinging-nettle waves, and there’s no doubt that the wilting flower wrapped in blankets is just that. Smith wonders if he’s been through something worse than he has to have that kind of look in his eyes like he’s _drifting_. Sedna knows he probably is.

“Hello,” Smith says plainly. It’s not the most charming thing he could have said, but he’s willing to excuse himself because he just took a twenty-six hour power nap and he’s a little off-kilter as it is just hanging around all this stinking landfae magic. “What’s someone like you doing locked up in this shithole?” That gets the selkie’s attention certainly, and he cracks a smile that makes Smith’s chest tighten. _It’s so fucking sad_.

“You see it too, then.” the selkie whispers, voice strained, weak. “The way he crushes you from the inside?” Smith nods, venturing into the modest living space and taking a wary seat on the edge of the blankets. And then the selkie gets a good hard look, a good hard _whiff_ of him, and his eyes light up like Christmas. “ _You!_ ” he cries, lunging for Smith, and now he’s speaking old waterfae and that makes Smith want to throw up and cry and scream all at once. “ _You’re that waterfae I keep smelling!_ ”

Instead of any of those options, he pulls his new companion into his lap more comfortably and pats his back. He doesn’t even speak old waterfae anymore, just understands it now that he’s out of practice. “Yeah. That’s me. I’m Smith.” He flashes expectant amber orbs a dazzling smile, and they crinkle at the edges as his face expands into a wide, full grin.

“I’m Trottimus Maximus Aurelius the Third. You can call me Trott if you want.”

Smith throws his head back and laughs, and it feels really nice to have something to smile about. It’s like coming up for air the way it works through him, inky black magic bubbling out of his mouth as he does. “Right. Trott it is!”

 

* * *

 

Smith originally thinks this ‘plan’, this scheme Trott has concocted in his free time and on the paper he’s taped under his bed so Kirin can’t find it, is just speculation. Just wishes in a well. There’s no way he’s going to break them out, no way he’s going to steal his own skin and the charm that Kirin has from his bridle.

And then Trott waltzes into the room Smith demanded they share, keys jingling as he twirls them around his finger.

“What the fuck is that,” Smith says, and it isn’t a question so much a shellshocked slip of the tongue. “What the fuck are those.” Trott gives him a wicked smile, wolfish and excited, and Smith jumps out from beneath his blankets. “You’re _joking_! You’re a maniac, Trott, what in the fuck possessed you to--” The rest of his sentence is muffled, Trott all but stuffing his fingers into Smith’s open mouth as he tries to shut him up. “Do you have some kind of death wish?” Trott hisses, backing Smith against the wall of their bedroom with a muffled thud.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Smith struggles around Trott’s hand, glaring daggers down at the selkie. “You’re going to get us both killed! And, fuck, oh Sedna, Trott! I’m not getting killed the sidhe lord! I still have a shred of dignity!”

Trott rolls his eyes and releases Smith from his grip, choosing instead to squeeze his cushy walrus body under his bed. “You’re not going to die. We’ve been over the plan a million times, and the solstice is coming up, so you’ll have the perfect time to make the uproar that we need. And besides, he’s too focused on _William_ to notice his missing keys.”

“Those are some pretty damn important keys,” Smith argues.

Trott sighs, voice calm. as he wiggles around amongst the dust bunnies. “It’s pretty damn important that the sidhe lord’s right hand man makes a good impression.” Smith can’t even argue with the logic--Trott consistently shocks him with just how cunning he can be for a selkie. From Smith’s knowledge of the folk, they typically only interested themselves in dancing and singing folk songs on the beach, not plotting semi-political overthrow and escape from Kirin, the iron fist of the city.

“Fair enough, but if you get us killed, I’m going to haunt your ghost until you undie and die again.” Trott’s laugh stirs dust under the bed and he sneezes, banging his forehead against the bed’s metal frame. Smith laughs so hard he cries, crumpled in a mess on the floor beside the bed.

 

* * *

 

On Trott’s cue, he slips into Kirin’s office, vacant of the fae until after the solstice celebration. Smith lets his glamor slip, features twisting into a monstrous steed, hooves clattering against the floor angrily as he shakes his mane. _Perfect_. Fae slip past each other in the main hall, all carrying dishes or streamers or something else arbitrary the sidhe lord declared necessary for the festivities.

They simply aren’t prepared when a warhorse comes charging forward like hell on legs, bucking and kicking. Kirin isn’t in his presence, which _would_ be a good thing were Smith not solely running on anger at this point, smashing plates underfoot as his massive body knocks several fae senseless. He’ll feel bad about it later, but now he focuses on just how good it feels to be free of his pathetic human form, if only for a short while.

“Call Kirin, oh God, someone call Kirin,” he hears, and a few landfae go scurrying out a door Smith can’t fit through. Lucky for them, he snarls to himself, trotting cooly in the now-empty foyer, tossing his head from side to side, the sound of breaking china and crinkling paper like music to his ears. And let them get Kirin, let him come! What is he going to do when Trott gets his bridle’s charm back? Smith would just as easily rip his throat out like he was some pathetic human.

By the time Kirin arrives back in the building, Smith has made a lovely mess of his entry hall, and he’s halfway through chewing up what he’s pretty sure is an original Monet when Kirin bursts into the room, William hot on his heels as they both observe the terrible disaster area of a foyer.

“Smith, what on Earth have you _done_?” Kirin laughs, but it’s wrathful and spiteful, full of bitterness as it cascades around them in an echo. Smith tosses his head and snorts. “What, now? At the moment, I’m eating your lovely paintings. You must keep up, Dave. People will take advantage of you.”

This particular bit of snark, like all bits of snark Smith spits in Kirin’s direction, does not bode well with anyone on the receiving in. William’s mouth drops open and he covers it with one gloved hand, and Kirin outright growls. Smith would normally be quaking, would normally be the equivalent of a dead man, but he’s not normally a great water horse, so instead, he taps the tile floor with a hoof and shakes his head boredly.

Kirin chuckles softly, this time pitying. “You. Follow. Right now. We’re going to nip this right in the bud,” Kirin commands, and it’s alarming how obediently Smith is forced to do as he says. “And get out of that pathetic form.” He does so. Smith is shocked, staring down at his hands and trying to cling to anything that will stop him from following. Hasn’t Trott retrieved their things by now? He instantly worries, and Kirin beckons for Smith to let go, which he does, bounding toward Kirin’s office in a panic.

Trott whirls to face the kelpie with a grin, skin drawn across his shoulders like a great cape, but the smile on his face slips off once Smith’s company registers in his brain. Kirin tosses his head back in a great, booming laugh, white orb blinding with white-hot electricity snapping across the ceiling for a moment. “Oh, Trott. Again? Haven’t you realized there’s no running from this? No escaping? You owe me your _life._ ”

“I don’t owe you anything.” Trott’s voice is as still and hard as death, but the wind whipping around them makes Smith’s ears hurt. He’s pretty sure he’s the only one who can hear it, too, but he’s terrified all the same. “You took advantage of me. You collect people who are weaker than you, who need someone stronger! Like me, like Smith, even like Will.”

Kirin steps protectively in front of the human companion in solstice regalia, glamor flickering away for a moment as he exposes himself. He’s massive, a demon with eyes for days and horrible sharp teeth. And the horns, of course, he always has them, but on midnight blue skin and countless glares and a sabertooth’s grin, they somehow scare Smith right down to his core. “Enough of this! Smith, be loyal to your master and rip his throat out. _Now_.”

Smith looks to Trott in horror, a steady stream of “no, no, please, no” falling in a manic rhythm from his lips. Despite himself, despite everything, he can feel his magic snaking its way around Trott, who doesn’t resist. He doesn’t understand--he can’t affect fae like he can humans, why is Trott letting him, why isn’t he resisting--but their bodies fit together like jigsaw pieces and Smith kisses him roughly, already baring his fangs with a watering mouth, his grip on Trott’s arm apologetically tight.

He shoves Trott hard to the ground, flinching despite instinct creating enjoyment in his cruelty, before looming over him. “Go on! Kill him!” Smith’s mouth expands horribly in the kelpie’s way, but before he can open wide and swallow Trott up, a familiar weight snaps into place on his neck, jarring him from his dreamlike trance. He clutches immediately at his throat, fingertips brushing his charm, the charm he’d given away in the place of his bridle, and he’s so relieved he could cry.

“You didn’t keep it,” he whispers, voice already thick with emotion he doesn’t have the time to classify. “You gave it back. You could have kept it.” Trott nods and wraps his arms around Smith’s neck, fingers weeding through sandy waves as he clutches him tightly.

“Phase two, I told you,” he murmurs into Smith’s ear, maneuvering himself so that he can climb onto Smith’s back. The beast bursts out of him then, Trott thankfully clinging tightly to his mane, and not even Kirin ventures to touch him. He understands as well as William does, as well as Trott does, that kelpies freed of their shackles and with so much wrath are no simple beast to tamper with.

 

* * *

 

The “safehouse” he’s been told about was certainly one half of the word at first glance. It was a cottage, a quaint red-roofed little thing standing odd among the uniform housing. Smith allowed Trott to dismount before changing back into his glamored human form, putting his hands on his hips as they both stare up at this impossibly quirky home.

“This is it?” Trott asks, incredulous. Smoke even rises from the brick chimney, and an impeccable row of flowers lines every window. “This is seriously it?”

Smith shrugs. “Guess so. Didn’t think it’d be so, er…cute.” He laughs, and it’s a little more hysterical than it should be, adrenaline draining out of his body. Trott joins in not long after, clutching at his shirt as he lets his body lean against Smith’s, forehead resting on his collarbone as they both fall to giggling messes at the front gate of the cottage.

“I guess we should knock, huh?” Smith says once they’ve recovered, and Trott’s hand in his own, clammy and twitching, is much more comforting than it rationally should be. Smith’s not one for affections. He doesn’t let people in. He’s making one exception.

The door even has a brass knocker, and Smith takes the cool metal in his hands and pounds the door with it a few good times. He wraps a protective arm around Trott’s waist then, suddenly very on edge. They don’t even know if this is the real safe haven for opposers of Kirin, and they don’t know who will answer the door besides.

Both of them are surprised at the friendly pair of faces that appear from behind the wooden door. “Well, what a couple you are!” a boastful grin remarks affectionately, and a wooden spoon smacks the top of the grin’s head, widening it infinitely. The grin belongs to a stocky thing, Smith would venture to guess dwarf, but he’s never been good at land creatures, and an immensely ginger dwarf as well. He’s wearing a sweater and an apron smudged with flour or cornmeal or something else powdery, and he gestures for them to come inside. His companion is a direct contrast, though just as wise-looking if not more so, immaculately messy hair going salt-and-peppery at the roots, crow’s feet prominent as he glares kindly down at the dwarf at his side.

“Now,” the tall one says, shutting the door gently and coming to face the two waterfae with his hands on his hips. “Where are your manners, Honeydew? These are our guests!” The dwarf--Honeydew, apparently--smiles sheepishly at them and pats his stomach casually, sending clouds of dust flying with each slap. “Right,” he says sheepishly. “Sorry, Xephos. Welcome home, strangers! I've just put a lovely rum-raisin loaf in!”

 

 


	3. but as sure as God made black and white

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sentience! Rain! A gargoyle that watches people have sex with vapid confusion. Plus, muddy puddles!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for putting up with this long gap between chapters! i've been so busy with community college and maintaining a social life on top of that! anyway, this chapter deals heavily with religion and devout faith. (finally, a ross chapter!)
> 
> thanks for reading. this fic, at the moment, is planned to have 4 chapters, but we shall see what happens in the future!
> 
> this chapter's a little short compared to the other two, and i'm sorry about that, but ross doesn't have that background that smith and trott do, and this is a background chapter! he's a relatively new baby to this whole...sentience thing. to make up for it, chapter 4 should be a heck of a lot longer. after all, we have to tie this thing up somehow!

The first time the gargoyle gets a breath of air into his lungs, he is alone. He lifts a once-stiff set of wiggling fingers to his face and he laughs--did they always do that? He takes his first tentative steps alone, stony exterior grazing the cold, debris-covered floor for the first time, and it’s wonderful. He’s awake, he’s alive, and he can feel the way the hole in the wall that he’s grown to affectionately refer to as “that hole in the wall” sends a breeze through the cathedral and cools his face.

Being alive is the best thing that he’s ever experienced. Granted, he hasn’t experienced much, but he’s seen plenty of things, and he knows enough about a thing or two to know that being alive is pretty much the only way there is to be! It’s the only way anyone can get around, anyway. The only way to move!

And oh, does he move. When he gets walking down, really catches the rhythm of left-right-left-right, he can’t do anything but walk. He spends a whole day, sunrise to moonrise, simply walking around, He doesn’t even go anywhere specific, just wandering the great cathedral hall where he once stood as stationary as the half-broken brothers and sisters around him. Once he gets the hang of walking, he learns how to run. Running is like walking, but it’s much more fun, and the wind whips past the gargoyle’s body much faster, much more pleasantly against his marble skin.

Unfortunately, the remains of the other stone men and women in the great church don’t move, don’t talk, but he does move, and he does talk. He talks a lot when he figures out he can. He loves the sound of his own voice, and this strikes him as slightly conceited, but after several hundred years of never hearing his own voice, never realizing he had one in the first place, he can’t get enough of it. He reads the ornate tapestries in the languages he understands, and he makes do with the ones he doesn’t. Everythings sounds right to him, anyway, it isn’t like he has anyone around to criticize his pronunciation.

Sometimes he wishes someone would correct his pronunciation.

 

* * *

 

Every time he feels the running catch up to him and he can’t keep his eyes open, he’s afraid he’s going to return to his stone pedestal. Before he loses the battle to exhaustion like he always does, he prays. He’s pretty sure God is the only thing keeping him from turning back. Oh, he’s very grateful for God, naturally.

When he wakes from his sleep one morning--and he can still move, hooray!--he finds that his view of the perfect blue and white sky is obstructed. The puffy clouds have condensed, now, collected to form a sort of blockade against the vibrant yellow-white of the sun. It’s colder, too.

The gargoyle doesn’t typically venture past the church walls, but upon investigation of the sky, which is honestly just a skeptical squint up at black clouds more than it is an inquisition, opens him up to an entirely new sensation. Water against his skin, water he can feel touching him, cooling the warmth that shouldn’t logically be humming just under his skin. “Well, that’s certainly something!” he says matter-of-factly, and as he looks up to thank God for the water pooling in the dips of his collarbones, the water begins to pour, beating against him in the softest waves he can imagine.

Rain.

He stands for a while and takes it all in, stands still as the grave for so long with his eyes closed that he hardly notices the gentle pattern against his skin’s cease. The rainclouds part and the sun returns, bright and empathetic and so, so warm in comparison to the water from the heavens. He almost mourns the loss of the rain until he notices the subtleties that it leaves behind when it goes.

Crevices hold water like basins for the gargoyle to wash his face in, dips in the floor like baths. He splashes his hands and his feet in them, and in the larger ones, he sits. The smell of the rain lingers as well, and it seems to drip off the plants and the walls and envelop him in a familiarity, a sense of home. This is his home, after all! And he is quickly learning just how many smells and tastes and sights it holds.

 

* * *

 

A brick smashes into the window, and a cacophony of shattering glass would make Ross flinch if he could blink. Another follows, and then another, and then something on fire. It laps at his feet, and he’s thankful he can’t really feel anything. He’s also thankful for the clergyman that disposes of it with a basin of water.

The shouting matches between holy men and vandals that he can see from the corners of his eyes if he focuses hard on his peripherals gets progressively louder as the night continues. And it is night. The gargoyle is afraid, and if he had a heart, it would be beating against the ribcage he would also have. Hopes he has. Knows he doesn’t.

And after the words, after the threats, come fulfillments. Promises are kept. They bring tools from their places of employment, from their homes, and they use them well. The gargoyles lower, the ones without wings that graze the gates of Hell, do not make it. They go first. Then the gates themselves fall victim to pickaxe and knife and hammer. The base of the tree, the snaking garden’s centermost point, and the bludgeons feel like wildfire as they crackle and shake the walls that the stone man is bound to. He can feel them closing in on him, knows that his place at the top of the tree’s branches marks him as the beast, the temptation, the symbol of the very men chipping away now at his legs, at his lower body--he couldn’t run now even if he was able to--and then suddenly everything is blinding, white-hot agony, over in an instant.

The gargoyle wakes from his dream with a gasp of the cool morning air, the stony lungs in his chest expanding and constricting comfortingly, the heavy heart in his dense ribcage, the ribcage he has, beating like a heavy rain. Dreams are new to him, they come sporadically and strangely, and they are never kind. In fact, they run on a loop, and they all end in the death of the gargoyle in his hardened marble form, the version of him that could never move. The strange alternate version of him that sits at the top of the tree of Eden. The devil.

He can’t help but think this is some kind of introspection that he’s unconsciously making, but he only thinks this for a moment, because oh, there are strange things now across his back, unfamiliar wings stretching across the pew, casting aquamarine shadows across the red carpeting.

Flying takes the horror of his place as the devil from his mind, because he can go so high he thinks he’ll reach heaven.

 

* * *

 

He remembers humans, remembers their familiar fond scrapes of fingertips softer than stone against his humanoid face carved from the wall. The holy men of the church must have felt some kind of fondness for him, surely, because they even gave him a name.

Ross.

Ross is his name. He rolls it on his tongue until it doesn’t even sound like a word, and this is just as well, because his name is his word and his word alone, and it doesn’t have to be real. His concept of real and unreal were a bit skewed as it stood, considering a hundred years ago he simply hadn’t been. Or at least, hadn’t been alive and able to move.

But now, Ross could move. Ross was alive. Ross could sing and Ross could run and Ross could even fly like the bats roosting in the mornings, like the birds roosting in the night.

The first time Ross realizes who he is, he is alone, too. He’s starting to understand the kind of pattern there is to aloneness, about how lonesome those who are alone get, how intense the feeling of abandonment is. He tries not to focus on it. The horns on his head, the barbed tail that rips and snags on the carpet, how could he have missed it before? How could he have not gazed for more than a sore second at the mural his body had emerged from?

He is a demon. No, he is the devil. It’s obvious, if he goes and positions himself in his old place, how the stone beasts at his feet claw and revile in the hellfire that laps at their heels. How the branches that once stemmed from his back twist and twine and mar the tree of knowledge with the heads of snakes.

He is bad.

When the first humans he’s seen in hundreds of years enter the walls of the church, Ross is really at a loss for what he’s supposed to do. He’d never really interacted with the previous inhabitants, and they had never worn quite so little clothing, certainly had never had quite such outrageous colored hair.

So he hides from them, as is logical, and he comes to find his security within home. The cathedral’s belfry is inaccessible by humans for the most part, and it’s much too dangerous-looking for even the savviest of adventurers to venture into without some worry. Therein, his hiding place becomes his oft-visited spot for thinking, especially under the golden bell, where he can listen to the wind whip around through the cracks and pretend they are voices lulling him toward them, toward humanity that he’s learning very quickly will not appreciate someone as dangerous and as monstrous as him.

 

* * *

 

They laugh. They kiss. They scrape their bodies along each other and they discard their clothing and they feel. Ross envies them and he pities them. They don’t know how lucky they are.

They're complimentary, one tall and skinny, back dotted with soft brown spots that compliment the milky expanse of his spine, the other short, all roundness and dark skin and hair that is neither out of place nor impeccable. (Ross would describe it as  _artfully tousled_ , actually. The shorter one wore thick spectacles, and seemed to fall under the watchful, calculated hands of the other. They meshed in a swirl of limbs, of desperation, of clutching.

He’s tried to leave the church grounds before, especially when strange humans like the two below do this awkward dance, all flailing limbs and noises and something carnal that makes Ross feel like he's stone again. He doesn't understand it, but it makes them happy somehow, so he wishes he could experience it, too. He shifts a little in his seat on a rafter, and it's careless, but he chips a bit of the ceiling, and moldy plaster rains down on the couple, who stop momentarily to peer up above them. Initially, Ross is horrified, frozen in a mix between panic and odd fascination--no human has ever taken notice to him, no human has seen him and gazed into his eyes like they have--but before he can make a decision, before he can even comprehend the fact that they're looking right at him, one of the pair speaks.

"Holy shit," says the tall one, staring at Ross with those eyes, those olive eyes that leak cunning and mischief, those eyes that sends another wave of plaster down on them because Ross grips the ceiling hard enough to crack it. "Trott, look at that thing! It moved." 

Ross gasps, and damn him, it echoes across the dark expanse of the cathedral. The short one, Trott, takes no notice, apparently, or maybe he writes it off for wind. "It's not alive, Smith. Craft magic is extremely rare, and just because you smelled some leftover fae trickery in an abandoned church doesn't mean you get to scare me." Smith, the tall one, stands, moonlight reflecting in from the church windows sending multi-colored shadows across his beautiful body. It's a stunning effect. Ross slips, falls, slams hard into a pew that sags under his weight, thankfully far enough away from them that he doesn't hurt them with any spray of debris. 

"Holy shit," Smith repeats. Trott's face echoes his rather vulgar sentiment, and Ross carefully dissects himself from the rubble he's created, cheeks tinting with red stained glass, creating a blush that spreads across his face. "I told you it moved."

"I," he begins, forked tongue flicking out nervously as he watches them, examining his options: fight or flight. "I'm sorry to frighten you. I would have kept quiet."

 


End file.
